Should we ever fight missions where we can't get any infiltration?

[Sooty]

It just doesn't seem possible to beat sooooooo many enemies

[trihero]

Interesting that you should ask this question, because I do have a couple scenarios where you might consider it - supply raid missions, and sabotage missions. Those some of the rare missions where you get to take corpses back. Maybe you don't mind going in at 0% infiltration...ok maybe that's suicide but I wonder what a good breakpoint would be for difficulty vs reward. It's highly dependent on player comfort and difficulty level, time of the game, etc, but I wonder how low people purposely go to get more bodies. I'm too sissy and always go for 100% infiltration for the evac time and "manageable" pod sizes, but if you have a good offensive group....why NOT just infiltrate to say 50% and take home double the corpses or so?

[Goumindong]

It just doesn't seem possible to beat sooooooo many enemies

Yes. You will eventually want to get a squad of heavies prepraed for missions that have "enemy retaliation" on them.

My squad is:

1 Pure Medic
1 Hacker (Skip Threat Assessment)
1 Gunner (can be replaced with technical or support grenadier or needle grenadier depending on whether or not you have suppression on your hacker)
1 Spark
Fill remaining squad with needle grenadiers: Fill needle grenadiers with grenades

Step 1: Find good cover
Step 2: Blow everything up
Step 3: Put aid-protocol on the Spark and run them around picking up loot/triggering pods/getting shot at/killing things

[JLtheking]

I would LOVE to see a video of what a Swarming Supply Raid looks like. So we know how much to prepare.

Also, don't grenadiers have a finite number of grenades. I've got to imagine that once you run out, you're pretty much screwed.

[dodger]

I would LOVE to see a video of what a Swarming Supply Raid looks like. So we know how much to prepare.

Also, don't grenadiers have a finite number of grenades. I've got to imagine that once you run out, you're pretty much screwed.

They do, but they can get a free one from the perk, and any specialist(s) with airdrop can hand out two more grenades over the course of the mission.

[rescuepenguin]

I did this very thing the other night, but it was in an advent strength 1 region. I brought 5 sharp shooters with a couple shinobis and specialist(in case of mecs) Being a strength 1 zone it was 44 enemies. They can get fairly intense. It was 5 pods I believe with about 8 or so enemies in each one, plus a couple of the drones were seperate. Most of them were normal advent troopers/officers etc. I think about 5 sectoids, 3 or 4 vipers, and 3 or 4 drones. It was incredibly easy. Though both of my shinobi took some minor damage due to some bad plays on my part. Super easy though. I have a troop column in a strength 5 that I might be doing later the same way. (might, because my game is having issues and I think I kind of want to restart the campaign)
My squad worked very well, but i suspect the needle grenadiers would too. If you can engage with grenades then you can basically take out the entire pod in 1 shot. In addition to this, your grenades can hit several enemies at a time most of the time, due to how tightly packed the enemies will be. Not a bad tactic to consider.

[Goumindong]

I would LOVE to see a video of what a Swarming Supply Raid looks like. So we know how much to prepare.

Also, don't grenadiers have a finite number of grenades. I've got to imagine that once you run out, you're pretty much screwed.

Yes but they get 4 to 5 each and you can eventually get 2-3 more with full kit. If you're balls to the wall one grenadier (Heavy Ordinance, Full Kit, 3 Grenade Slots Full) can bring 8 grenades to a mission.

I bring 4-6 grenadiers. I am not too worried about running out :p

Though that is what the medic/hacker/spark and gunner are for. The Spark has 30 defense natively. The medic and hacker can perma-Aid protocol on him giving him 50+ defense natively. You pick all the armor abilities(melee damage reduction, get the OW armor/defense from a PCS) and maybe the punch-fist because its punch fist. And just face tank anything you need to mop up

[trihero]

I did this very thing the other night, but it was in an advent strength 1 region. I brought 5 sharp shooters with a couple shinobis and specialist(in case of mecs) Being a strength 1 zone it was 44 enemies. They can get fairly intense. It was 5 pods I believe with about 8 or so enemies in each one, plus a couple of the drones were seperate. Most of them were normal advent troopers/officers etc. I think about 5 sectoids, 3 or 4 vipers, and 3 or 4 drones. It was incredibly easy. Though both of my shinobi took some minor damage due to some bad plays on my part. Super easy though. I have a troop column in a strength 5 that I might be doing later the same way. (might, because my game is having issues and I think I kind of want to restart the campaign)
My squad worked very well, but i suspect the needle grenadiers would too. If you can engage with grenades then you can basically take out the entire pod in 1 shot. In addition to this, your grenades can hit several enemies at a time most of the time, due to how tightly packed the enemies will be. Not a bad tactic to consider.

Which difficulty? I wonder how manageable going in at 0 infiltration is at higher advent strength and later into the game. I think going in at 50% with appropriate troops might be more sensible as the game goes on. Bodies are not worth losing troops.

[trihero]

I would LOVE to see a video of what a Swarming Supply Raid looks like. So we know how much to prepare.

Also, don't grenadiers have a finite number of grenades. I've got to imagine that once you run out, you're pretty much screwed.

On rookie at 0% at advent level 1 (swarming), I faced 38 aliens (three groups of 8-man pods, then 4's and 6's here and there). It feels a little bit like an HQ raid where if you move an inch there are tons of mobs and they tend to keep coming at you because they see the bodies and noise you're making. This is where assault or shinobi heavy teams are not recommended since you don't want to trigger additional 8 man pods. I think as long as the enemy's hp doesn't outscale your weapons too hard (which happens in the end game quite frequently), and you bring a 10 man squad you should be fine. I took 2 snipers to hide in the back (hard to find good cover for 10 people on the frontline), a defensive grenadier, an offensive grenadier, and then gunners/specialists/rangers as the beef with 1 shinobi to scout in concealment.

I'm beginning to think difficulty doesn't directly affect number of aliens, the direct factor is advent strength and infiltration level it's just that higher difficulties grow advent strength higher and have less infiltration bonus from boosting. I was watching a steam's legendary HQ run and for the first one it had low 40s of aliens which is pretty close to what you see on rookie at 38-39.

I hope they make the infiltration/advent strength tables public because it's super important to know how many pods you should expect to see. I was watching Xavier's stream (he's one of the devs I think?) on LW2 legendary and he just knows to a pretty high degree how many pods to expect, their composition, and where they are situated.

[Manifest]

I did this very thing the other night, but it was in an advent strength 1 region. I brought 5 sharp shooters with a couple shinobis and specialist(in case of mecs) Being a strength 1 zone it was 44 enemies. They can get fairly intense. It was 5 pods I believe with about 8 or so enemies in each one, plus a couple of the drones were seperate. Most of them were normal advent troopers/officers etc. I think about 5 sectoids, 3 or 4 vipers, and 3 or 4 drones. It was incredibly easy. Though both of my shinobi took some minor damage due to some bad plays on my part. Super easy though. I have a troop column in a strength 5 that I might be doing later the same way. (might, because my game is having issues and I think I kind of want to restart the campaign)
My squad worked very well, but i suspect the needle grenadiers would too. If you can engage with grenades then you can basically take out the entire pod in 1 shot. In addition to this, your grenades can hit several enemies at a time most of the time, due to how tightly packed the enemies will be. Not a bad tactic to consider.

Which difficulty? I wonder how manageable going in at 0 infiltration is at higher advent strength and later into the game. I think going in at 50% with appropriate troops might be more sensible as the game goes on. Bodies are not worth losing troops.

I played 3 supply raids on Impossible in the last two days (from Advent Strength 3-5), the enemy count ranged from 40-44. The highest opportunity time I was given was about 4 days 20 hours. There were typically 5 pods of 8-9 (in fact that's all I've encountered I think, was always five pods) on minimum infiltration/swarming. I'd deploy 10 men and get to 10% infiltrate or so. Enemy tech level seemed normal, I fought a few viper Serpens and base MECs at the highest and that seems standard for my time.

I've never fully infiltrated a supply raid (with one shinobi) but I'm guessing the enemy count might fall to like ~25 at the optimistic least. And the max is 44 so far. On that note, please keep in mind what extra infiltration will actually give you. Would you rather field 6 guys and fight ~36 enemies with 75% infil, or just take 10 and fight the full 45?

[Manifest]

I played 3 supply raids on Impossible in the last two days (from Advent Strength 3-5), the enemy count ranged from 40-44. The highest opportunity time I was given was about 4 days 20 hours. There were typically 5 pods of 8-9 (in fact that's all I've encountered I think, was always five pods) on minimum infiltration/swarming. I'd deploy 10 men and get to 10% infiltrate or so. Enemy tech level seemed normal, I fought a few viper Serpens and base MECs at the highest and that seems standard for my time.

Oh, but this was on relatively low strength and relatively early in the game, I've seen supply raids that ran up to 60 so far, even on lower difficulties, so don't count on this.

[trihero]

I don't know how to think about risk/reward tradeoff for these. You have to balance your greed for corpses/supplies with being able to take on dozens of enemies with minimal injuries, and that can be very complicated based on enemy strength, your troop composition/tech/strength. There's also not too much point to increasing the enemy count (besides exp) if your answer is to just bring a lot of technicals to blow their corpses up.

I think you can be greedy in the early months when the enemy tech level isn't that crazy, but once they start fielding groups with multiple andromedons then my mouth just goes sour

[juplaa]

You definitly should if you can muster a squad you feel comfortable with. I usually go in with a "Phalanx-squad" for missions where you will face heavy opposition. It works fairly well, only 2-4 wounded usually. (Playing on veteran, early to midgame)

A gunner or 2 + 1 ranger in front as the shield. A bare minimum of 2 Snipers in the back as the long spears. In the middle a specialist-officer and and the rest are grenadiers/ techs. and a Shinobi with a shotgun to scout my flank or to attract an new pod with squad-sight into an OW-trap. I prefer to just neglect mobility as much as possible because the idea is to fight from an entrenched position. Therefor choosing a good spot before engaging is key (-> good cover up front for gunners and ranger, Good cover for your grenadiers/technicians).

After blowing up cover with technicians/grenadiers your gunner(s), ranger and snipers have a field day.

[trihero]

I prefer to just neglect mobility as much as possible because the idea is to fight from an entrenched position.

I second this. I bring full out gear flashbangs smokes armor is the base kit for everyone on 0% supply raids. On the shinobi I prefer just armor for ease of scouting.